On 7/30/07 10:54 PM, "David Sless" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> In so far that anthropological investigation is allied to any kind
>> of problem solving, it's important always to ask whose problem is
>> being solved, or whose description of the problem is being used,
>> and who owns the data and the outcome.
> These questions PRECEDE and frame any data collected and subsequent
> outcome. In turn, these questions are only asked if one begins by
> trying to articulate the POSITION from which one speaks, listens, or
> engages. But the articulation of which I speak is quite concrete‹
> describing the communication landscape from where I stand inside it.
Dear David and list,
Thank you for your insightful and engaging posts. I liked them especially
because they reflected on some of the most important ideas of our postmodern
condition, how you've positioned yourself with respect to them, and some of
the ways you have adapted them to your work.
Your "concrete and specific interests" bring the list's recent
anthropological threads back to core questions in design research, design
thinking and design theory.
You say: "I assume I'm already embedded in the world in a particular context
(Whether I acknowledge this in the abstract or not). How could it be
otherwise!"
It just seems to me that the consequences of being embedded, situated and
de-centered are more apparent today because of our postmodern awareness.
Ideologies, points-of-view, unspoken assumptions, power relationships and
the repertoires of experience we bring to interpretations and the
construction of meaning are no longer so easily avoided or ignored.
A reassessment of Margaret Mead's work - to take the recent example - from
this contemporary perspective is both natural and intellectually useful and
doesn't mean that she was a bad anthropologist, just a shining product of
her times whose work now needs to be seen with more in mind.
Baby/bathwater department: To my mind the "baby" is the gain from the
insights of postmodernism and the "bathwater" is all the angst, odd designs,
bad writing and blather you deplore.
I remember when an Inuit nuclear family was described as:
A man, a woman, two children and an anthropologist.
Warm regards to all on this warm summer day in Eugene - over 90º.
Jerry
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Jerry Diethelm
Architect - Landscape Architect
Planning & Urban Design Consultant
Prof. Emeritus of Landscape Architecture
and Community Service € University of Oregon
2652 Agate St., Eugene, OR 97403
€ e-mail: [log in to unmask]
€ web: http://www.uoregon.edu/~diethelm
€ 541-686-0585 home/work 541-346-1441 UO
€ 541-206-2947 work/cell
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